The system uses natural materials in combination with scaffolding tubes to create easy-to-assemble and modular structures that can serve as homes, schools or clinics in a refugee camp or other emergency situation.

How it works is that wall frames are filled with sand, gravel or stones, while the roof is topped off with soil to allow for insulation as well as the growth of micro crops to eat. The structures also have a container to channel and recover rainwater, are solar-powered and its floors are made of a durable plywood.&nbsp;

The structures are unique not only because they are cost-effective and mobile -- similar to&nbsp;the Ikea Foundation shelters the U.N. is investing in&nbsp;-- but are also so easy to assemble so that individuals with no prior construction experience can, and do, help build them, and are paid to do so. According to Sinclair, parents of&nbsp;the students using the schools&nbsp;participated in their construction.

"We victimize refugees by treating them as second-class citizens instead of understanding that they are some of the most resilient and hardworking people on the planet,&rdquo; Sinclair explained to FastCompany&nbsp;of their decision to make the system so intuitive. &ldquo;By engaging the refugees as paid laborers ensures that they once again feel in charge of their own destiny and leave with the skills to reassemble the school back in their home country."

Though the structures come at a much lower cost when compared to traditional construction, the price tag is still notable: according to ArchDaily, the schools cost about $30,000 each. The concept development was supported by a Crowdrise campaign, while the construction was funded by Pilosio in partnership with local nonprofit groups.

]]>1 Man's Tweet Inspired People Across Rome To Clean Up Their City55b93143e4b0224d883509412015-07-29T16:02:11-04:002015-07-31T14:59:01-04:00Joseph Erbentrauthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-erbentraut/

A popular actor&rsquo;s tweet appears to have inspired the residents of one of the most beautiful cities in the world to take the matter of their hometown&rsquo;s excessive piles of trash into their own hands -- literally.

The city of Rome has been dealing with growing international criticism over its apparently corruption-crippled&nbsp;garbage pickup and public transit systems, particularly a scathing New York Times article&nbsp;that said the Italian capital has been &ldquo;degraded.&rdquo;

Fed up with the situation, actor Alessandro Gassmann encouraged residents to &ldquo;arm ourselves with broom, wallet and a trash bag and each one of us should clean up each their own little corner of the city&rdquo; in a tweet capped off by the hashtag #Romasonoio, which means &ldquo;I am Rome,&rdquo; The Atlantic&rsquo;s CityLab reports.

In response, many locals appear to be following Gassmann&rsquo;s directive, posting photos of their cleanup efforts to social media. Many of the volunteers are associated with the organization Retake Roma, which has been working since 2009&nbsp;to&nbsp;keep the Eternal City beautiful.

As the Guardian reported, even Rome&rsquo;s embattled&nbsp;mayor, Ignazio Marino, tweeted his support&nbsp;of Gassmann&rsquo;s call to action.

But not everyone is on board with the campaign. One writer said the campaign would serve only to &ldquo;take the heat off those in power&rdquo; who are actually responsible for the condition the city is in, according to CityLab. Others have argued that they already pay taxes to ensure that garbage is picked up, so it's not their responsibility to pitch in, Wanted In Rome magazine noted.

Nevertheless, it's hard to argue against residents in Italy's capital pitching in to help clean up the place they call home.

]]>Muslim Funny Fest Is Using Comedy To Overcome Stigma55b91f7ae4b0a13f9d1b472e2015-07-29T14:46:18-04:002015-07-29T16:59:01-04:00Joseph Erbentrauthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-erbentraut/

It is said that laughter is the best medicine, but can it help counter Islamophobia?

Dean Obeidallah and Maysoon Zayid were looking to accomplish just that with the Muslim Funny Fest, which they co-produced last week. The event marked the first-ever Muslim stand-up comedy festival in New York City, and possibly even in North America.

The festival, which brought together over a dozen Muslim comedians to perform at the Comic Strip Live comedy club, was a smash. According to the event&rsquo;s Facebook page, each show of the three-day event sold out.

The goal, Zayid explained to HuffPost Live this month, was to showcase the variety of experiences Muslims have, while also exploring what they share: having to deal with&nbsp;generally unfavorable views&nbsp;many Americans have of&nbsp;the Muslim community. In recent years, Americans' opinions of Muslims have actually worsened.

"The common link that, sadly, brings us together is the bigotry and hatred we are currently experiencing as American Muslims,&rdquo; Zayid told HuffPost, &ldquo;and I am hoping that the Muslim Funny Fest will do something to dilute that hate."&nbsp;

&ldquo;There&rsquo;s been a couple of instances where people have come up to me after a show -- this has been really heartwarming -- and they&rsquo;ve literally been in tears,&rdquo; Usman told AJ+. "And they said to me, like, &lsquo;I came into this show with so much anger and negativity in my heart towards Muslims, and you have completely destroyed that.&rsquo;&rdquo;

&ldquo;With comedy, you can reach people who will never go to a lecture on Muslims,&rdquo; Obeidallah, who is also a SiriusXM host and a&nbsp;Daily Beast columnist, told Couric. &ldquo;They would never read a book on Muslims. But they&rsquo;ll come to a comedy show. And while they&rsquo;re there, they&rsquo;re gonna laugh. And you hope maybe they learn something while they&rsquo;re laughing.&rdquo;

]]>New York Summer Camp Gives Homeless Children A Chance To Just Be Kids55b7c5f8e4b0a13f9d1a72d92015-07-28T14:12:08-04:002015-07-29T10:59:01-04:00Joseph Erbentrauthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-erbentraut/

For most kids, summer is a time of year to look forward to.

But that's not typically the case for the 23,000 children who live in New York City&rsquo;s homeless shelter system. With children out of school, shelters and temporary housing alike often become more crowded and stressful&nbsp;and the kids themselves are left with little to do during the day.

But&nbsp;Homes for the Homeless, a New York-based nonprofit, offers an alternative for over 500 homeless children each summer. Since 1989, the organization has brought hundreds of children each summer for three 16-day sleepaway camp sessions on the grounds of Harriman State Park in upstate New York. For many participants, the experience marks their first time traveling outside of the city.

At HFH&rsquo;s Camps Lanowa and Wakonda, the children -- who range in age from 6 to 13 -- are assigned a bunk in a cabin and take part in a range of activities, including swimming, volleyball, beadwork, dancing, drama, fishing, singing and hiking. In addition, activities like journal writing and bug hunting have an educational component disguised as summer fun.

&ldquo;It provides kids with a break from shelter life and helps combat summer learning loss,&rdquo; Herold told the Chronicle. &ldquo;We give the kid a break by sending them into the natural world and it gives the parents a reprieve because living in a shelter can be a stressful situation. For them to know that their child is in a safe space really allows them to relax.&rdquo;

A break is much needed for these youth. According to the National Center on Family Homelessness, children experiencing homelessness go hungry at twice the rate of other kids&nbsp;and have three times the rate of emotional and behavioral problems when compared to their non-homeless peers. By age 12, an estimated 83 percent of homeless children have witnessed at least one serious violent event.

An additional component of the camps is the &ldquo;Teen Leader&rdquo; program, which allows past campers to return to the camp to help counselors keep a watchful eye on campers and act as a mentor to them.

The camp is free of charge to children whose families are receiving public assistance and priority is given to children currently living in a shelter or those who have done so within the past year. Children in foster care can also take part.

In addition to the camp, Homes for the Homeless operates three family shelters -- two in the Bronx and one in Queens -- and offers educational and job-training programs.

Homes for the Homeless isn't the only organization offering such a program to the city's homeless youth. New York's Coalition for the Homeless has run Camp Homeward Bound&nbsp;in Harriman State Park since 1984.

Uber still has a long way to go in order to make its transportation network fully accessible to New Yorkers in wheelchairs, a disability rights organization said ahead of Sunday's 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

&ldquo;I&rsquo;m so shocked about how much discrimination there is in New York City,&rdquo; Dustin Jones, a disability rights advocate, says in the video. &ldquo;Getting around the city in a wheelchair is hard. People look the other way.&rdquo;

Jones went on to point out the progress the city&rsquo;s disability rights advocates have made toward their goal of making half the city&rsquo;s yellow taxi fleet wheelchair-accessible -- the city has agreed to achieving that goal by 2020 -- and claimed that, of Uber&rsquo;s 14,000-strong fleet, zero vehicles are similarly accessible. He also accused Uber of poaching taxi drivers who had been operating wheelchair-accessible cars.

In response to the criticism, Uber pointed to its wheelchair-accessible UberWAV service, which the company said in a statement to Capital New York,&nbsp;launched last August and makes over 300 pickups&nbsp;weekly. The UberWAV service&nbsp;allows users to request a wheelchair-accessible city taxi, but not a black car or any other option, through the app. Spokesman Khan Shoieb added that the app plans to expand that service in the future.

Presently, UberWAV primarily serves the four outer boroughs, the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island; the New York Daily News reported in January, that the service is not available in Manhattan below East 96th Street, so the majority of that borough is not covered.

The United Spinal Association counts transportation equity, particularly access to taxis, among one of its key advocacy issues. According to the organization&rsquo;s website, cities like Chicago, San Francisco and London -- which offers 100-percent wheelchair-accessible taxis -- have already taken action on this issue.&nbsp;

When it comes to working toward a healthier lifestyle, the answers to the problems of obesity, diabetes and diet-related chronic illnesses that threaten our future might actually lie in our past.&nbsp;

The volunteer program is an extension of&nbsp;the African Heritage Diet Pyramid, which Oldways created in 2011 with historians and dietitians. The idea is straightforward: to not only teach students how to prepare healthy and flavorful food, but also to help them understand how such food connects to their African heritage.

&ldquo;It gives people the tools they need, the techniques they can apply to different plant-based foods on the pyramid,&rdquo; Sarah McMackin, the program&rsquo;s manager at Oldways, told The Huffington Post. &ldquo;The impetus is to try and really help people put this way of eating into practice today.&rdquo;

The program is 100 percent plant-based -- &ldquo;because we know that is the part of the plate most people could use the most help with,&rdquo; McMackin explained -- and classes are offered free of charge thanks to a grant from the Walmart Foundation.&nbsp;The initiative&nbsp;began as a pilot program in 2013, and has since grown to the point where it has been offered at 100 different sites nationwide.&nbsp;

An African Heritage and Health Program class begins to take shape when a volunteer instructor signs up through the Oldways website and commits to teaching six weekly meetings, recruiting students and helping them track their progress. The organization provides the curriculum and can help instructors secure appropriate kitchen space. In some cases, Oldways has provided funding to reimburse the cost of groceries, but in others the instructors fundraise -- or consider charging a small student fee -- to cover that expense.

Instructors, according to McMackin, have included people from a range of backgrounds including dietitians, chefs and other community members who simply want to get themselves -- as well as their community organization or faith group -- to&nbsp;make better food choices.

In the first week of class outlined in the curriculum, students taste Jollof rice, a traditional West African dish, learn how to use herbs and spices to make spicy chickpeas and other dishes, and engage in an education segment about hidden sodium in processed foods. By the sixth week, students learn how to make braised cabbage, blackened okra and a mango and papaya fruit salad, and receive tips on how to make healthier choices when eating out.

The results have been encouraging. According to entrance and exit surveys administered by teachers to 519 students in 55 six-week classes during the program&rsquo;s 2013-2014 year, 63 percent of graduates of the program lost weight over the course of the class, 34 percent of students saw a decrease in blood pressure status (dropping a &ldquo;stage," such as going from hypertension stage 1 to prehypertension) and half of the participants lost inches from their waist.

In addition, according to the surveys, graduates report that they are cooking at home far more often and eating more leafy greens, whole grains, beans, fruits and vegetarian meals, in addition to exercising more often.

McMackin said she believes the lessons of the classes are resonating because&nbsp;they provide an alternative to the common, incorrect narrative that there is a certain inevitability to health disparities such as diabetes in the black community.

&ldquo;I think when you&rsquo;re barraged by a lot of the health disparities, which are true, but when that&rsquo;s all that you&rsquo;re given, there&rsquo;s a disempowerment to that,&rdquo; McMackin told HuffPost. &ldquo;You need something empowering and powerful and positive to counterbalance that, and I think this is doing what we hoped it would do so that folks can feel inspired to make these changes not just from a nutrition standpoint, but from the standpoint of reconnecting to healthy eating as cultural identity.&rdquo;&nbsp;

The program&rsquo;s success to date has allowed it to expand into a new citywide offering in Philadelphia. As the Philadelphia Inquirer reported last month, Oldways is partnering with five nonprofit groups to offer the free class on a regularly recurring basis, rather than ad hoc, at venues including kitchen spaces at two of the city&rsquo;s Free Library locations. If it works, they may bring the model to other cities.&nbsp;

Since the most common constructive comment that McMackin receives about the classes is simply that students want more of them, she is optimistic the program will continue to grow.

&ldquo;Everyone going through this program is ready to see change within communities of color,&rdquo; McMackin said. &ldquo;This is an empowering tool that comes from a positive, rich cultural history that is really shining a light on that history and having positive, tangible results.&rdquo;

It&rsquo;s been almost a year since Seattle-based singer-songwriter Mike Hadreas, who performs under the stage name Perfume Genius, took perhaps the biggest risk of his career to date.

Following two critically-acclaimed albums of down-tempo, piano-centric confessional indie pop -- 2010&rsquo;s &ldquo;Learning&rdquo; and 2012&rsquo;s &ldquo;Put Your Back N 2 It&rdquo; -- Hadreas took a different approach with his latest release, &ldquo;Too Bright.&rdquo;

While the songs on &ldquo;Too Bright&rdquo; still explore deeply personal themes that often relate back to Hadreas&rsquo; gay identity, the production has been turned up several notches. With high-profile collaborators like Adrian Utley (Portishead) and John Parish (PJ Harvey) on board, elements like Suicide-esque synths and Goblin-flavored percussion entered the equation, all topped off with a heavy dose of Freddie Mercury flourish.

The end result is thrilling, particularly when presented in a live context. Hadreas played Chicago&rsquo;s Pitchfork Music Festival last weekend was no exception.&nbsp;

Hadreas took the stage and shared that someone had told him to remove his lipstick during his walk to the stage, to which he responded, "No, I could have told him 'no' forever." Then, he launched into the raw, bruising &ldquo;My Body.&rdquo; The song sees the singer channelling Harvey at her grittiest, delivering blunt declarations like &ldquo;I wear my body like a rotted peach / You can have it if you handle the stink,&rdquo; while strutting across the stage in a style that screams "deal with it.&rdquo;&nbsp;

While all that might come as a surprise to fans more familiar with Perfume Genius&rsquo; quieter, stripped-down songs from his early work, the progression feels natural to Hadreas, who wrote the newer songs with the intention of pushing him beyond what may have felt more comfortable.

It wasn&rsquo;t immediately easy to translate the new songs onto the stage, Hadreas admitted in an interview backstage.

&ldquo;I tried to sing notes I&rsquo;m scared to try to reach and I tried to &lsquo;act as if&rsquo; a little bit,&rdquo; Hadreas told The Huffington Post. &ldquo;The first couple shows were a little shaky as far as not knowing how to move or if sound was going to come out when I screamed, but now I feel like a lot of those things are second nature to me. But I&rsquo;m not, like, the super 100-percent confident front man. I phase in and out of bravado.&rdquo;

The more aggressive approach is also reflected in the videos released for &ldquo;Too Bright&rdquo; singles &ldquo;Queen&rdquo; and &ldquo;Grid,&rdquo; both of which present stirring and disturbing interpretations of the songs&rsquo; content. In &ldquo;Grid,&rdquo; Hadreas is surrounded by faceless, pulsating bodies wearing silver bodysuits while he admires himself in a hand mirror and opens his legs wide to the pulsating beat. It&rsquo;s a video so strange Kate Bush would be proud.

He plans to aim higher with more visual projects in the future.&nbsp;

&ldquo;I love the videos I&rsquo;ve made but it&rsquo;d be nice to up it a little more and do something longer-form,&rdquo; Hadreas explained. &ldquo;One of my favorite movies of the last five or 10 years is called &lsquo;Dogtooth&rsquo; by Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos. If I made a movie I would want it to be something like that. Everything&rsquo;s in there, really disturbing moments, really laugh-out-loud moments and there&rsquo;s touching moments. I like things that have everything all at once.&rdquo;

It is perhaps that feeling-all-the-feelings, work-in-progress vibe that makes Hadreas&rsquo; music both so unusual and so appealing, particularly to those who relate to feeling like an outsider.

Though Hadreas freely admits he doesn&rsquo;t have it all figured out yet, he&rsquo;s happy to be taking his fans along for the journey.&nbsp;

&ldquo;I keep making the music I do because I feel very purposeful about making things that would be helpful or quell some loneliness in people,&rdquo; Hadreas said. &ldquo;I really needed that when I listened to music growing up and even now so I don&rsquo;t mind that sense of duty.&rdquo;

Hadreas&rsquo; own journey began in the suburbs of Seattle, where he first came out as gay to himself around the age of 12, and to family and friends after that. One singer in particular played a big role as he came to terms with his sexual identity.

&ldquo;Liz Phair I think was the first music I listened to that really hit that specific note,&rdquo; Hadreas said. &ldquo;I heard her music and she unashamedly singing about blow jobs and sexuality, things I hadn&rsquo;t even had the confidence to Google yet. &hellip; I had never heard that word sung or said let alone by a woman and singing it such a powerful, strong way. That was the closest thing I had to hearing my kind of &lsquo;shame&rsquo; being told shamelessly.&rdquo;

He was the only out gay person in his high school and, sick of being tormented, ended up dropping out during his senior year. He eventually wound up in New York City, where he began drinking in excess and doing &ldquo;a Chinese buffet&rdquo; of drugs. It wasn&rsquo;t until after he returned back home to the Seattle area and checked himself into rehab that he wrote his first song, &ldquo;Learning.&rdquo;

He posted that song and the others that followed to a Myspace page beginning in 2008 and eventually caught the eye of Matador Records, his musical home ever since.&nbsp;

Though the life of a musician touring the world is not the most conducive to sobriety -- and the majority of&nbsp; artists who end up in rehab do so after their big break, not before -- Hadreas says he &ldquo;wouldn&rsquo;t have it any other way.&rdquo;&nbsp;

&ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad I did it backwards because I wouldn&rsquo;t have made it to my shows or made the second album I think if I was still drinking and doing drugs," he said. "Not everyone is like that, but, for me, personally, nothing came from me -- no music, no going to work on time -- out of doing that.&rdquo;

Hadreas presses on with his music and, after a marathon of concerts and festival appearances, he&rsquo;s ready to head home to get back to writing new music, spending time with his mom and his dog and -- one would hope -- maintaining his always-entertaining social media presence, including Twitter commentary on marriage equality, Internet trolls&nbsp;and&nbsp;pop culture.

In addition to having what he calls a Ben Affleck &ldquo;obsession,&rdquo; he&rsquo;s also, it turns out,&nbsp;something of a dedicated Netflix reviewer:

&ldquo;There was one time I flagged every &lsquo;Brokeback Mountain&rsquo; review on Netflix that was negative, I was like &lsquo;not helpful&rsquo; and I spent like an hour doing it and I wrote a really serious review about it,&rdquo; Hadreas said. &ldquo;It's hard for me not to get really sensitive. I don&rsquo;t brush things off like that very easily. I think my music kind of gives that [defensiveness] a direction and a point to it, not just directionless anger at something.&rdquo;

]]>Chvrches Prepares To Disprove The Sophomore Slump With 'Every Open Eye'55aff315e4b07af29d574e0c2015-07-22T15:46:29-04:002015-07-24T10:59:01-04:00Joseph Erbentrauthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-erbentraut/

It&rsquo;s been a divine couple of years&nbsp;for Chvrches.

The Scottish synth-pop outfit -- featuring vocalist Lauren Mayberry, synth-master Martin Doherty and guitarist Iain Cook -- burst onto the scene internationally with dark-yet-danceable tracks like &ldquo;Lies,&rdquo; &ldquo;The Mother We Share&rdquo; and &ldquo;Recover&rdquo; in late 2012. By 2013, the trio was among the top five on BBC&rsquo;s Sound of 2013&nbsp;ranking and playing on all the major late-night talk shows before hitting the road for a non-stop itinerary of shows all around the world in support of their critically-admired debut album, &ldquo;The Bones of What You Believe.&rdquo;

Chvrches&rsquo; most recent leg of shows wrapped last November in South Korea and the band proceeded to spend a month and a half with their families before going at it again, returning to the studio to record the followup, &ldquo;Every Open Eye,&rdquo; which is due for a Sept. 25 release amid another long run of festival appearances and preceding a just-announced string of North American tour dates.

After eight months largely out of the public eye, one had to wonder if the band could carry forward the momentum propelling their seemingly unstoppable rise to indie-pop stardom and avoid the second-album slump to which so many previous acts have fallen victim.

But the release of &ldquo;Leave a Trace,&rdquo; Chvrches&rsquo; new single off the upcoming album, last week should silence any doubts. The song was met with almost immediate and universal praise for the song&rsquo;s in-your-face R&amp;B-tinged, earworm-worthy textures both online and from audiences at a trio of back-to-back festival appearances.

So what&rsquo;s in the secret sauce for the tight-knit trio? As Mayberry explained backstage at the Pitchfork Music Festival&nbsp;in Chicago&rsquo;s Union Park, the band made it a point to attempt to replicate the vacuum-like atmosphere in which they created the first album -- their own space in a small basement studio in Glasgow -- and ignore the temptation to bring in outside producers by continuing the do-it-yourself approach that made &ldquo;Bones&rdquo; a success.

&ldquo;Whether we like it or not, the second album does have preconceived ideas around it,&rdquo; Mayberry told The Huffington Post, &ldquo;so it made the most sense for us to try and eliminate as many outside influences as possible and just make it be the three of us so that whatever we come up with, whether it goes well or doesn&rsquo;t go well, is definitely us. We&rsquo;re very lucky to be able to do that.&rdquo;

The new songs also have a palpable sense of aggression and a Cookie Lyon-esque, I'm-getting-what&rsquo;s-mine vibe lying just beneath the surface, as evidenced by the lyrics on &ldquo;Leave a Trace&rdquo; &mdash; &ldquo;I have somehow got away with everything / Anything you ever did was strictly by design but you got it wrong / And I&rsquo;ll go anywhere but there,&rdquo; for example.

Mayberry says that was no coincidence, even if it wasn&rsquo;t the particular aim the band had going into the album. The album, she agrees, comes from a much more &ldquo;assertive&rdquo; position. She views &ldquo;Leave a Trace&rdquo; as something of a &ldquo;fight song.&rdquo;

&ldquo;When I look back at the first record, the songs I wrote about relationships on there were a bit more &lsquo;playing the victim&rsquo; kind of. I think there was a time and a place for that because that was what I was feeling at the time,&rdquo; Mayberry said, &ldquo;but I guess now I feel a lot more positive about my personal life and I think it&rsquo;s nice for me to be able to write about that as well as my bad experiences in a more assertive way."&nbsp;

That assertiveness has also stretched beyond the songs themselves, as Mayberry has received media attention for calling out rape threats&nbsp;and misogynistic comments that have been directed at her through male commenters on the Internet. She also helps run a Glasgow-based feminist collective called TYCI, which operates a website, zine, radio show, podcast and live event series &ldquo;promoting all things femme.&rdquo;&nbsp;

It&rsquo;s the same confidence Mayberry says she&rsquo;s had to channel during previous interviews with journalists who ask sexist questions like, &ldquo;What&rsquo;s it like to be a girl in a band?,&rdquo; &ldquo;What are your tips for festival fashion?&rdquo; or &ldquo;How do you stay so slim on tour, do you have any special diets?&rdquo; Actually, she noted, Cook is the only band member on any sort of diet, &ldquo;but they don&rsquo;t ask him that question.&rdquo;

Mayberry, a former journalist, says she can sense when a line of questioning from a writer is heading that direction and feels like a cat preparing to pounce into battle -- tail up, ears back -- when she anticipates it. It doesn&rsquo;t happen as often as it used to, though.

&ldquo;I guess if I read one more thing that says, &lsquo;She&rsquo;s so adorable,&rsquo; I&rsquo;ll probably puke,&rdquo; Mayberry said. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s this nice idea but you don&rsquo;t know me, we&rsquo;ve never met and I don&rsquo;t know how many people I have to punch in the crotch before they stop saying I&rsquo;m &lsquo;cute and adorable.&rsquo; There are worse things that could be said about you so it&rsquo;s not too bad, but sometimes I&rsquo;m like why are you saying that just because I&rsquo;m a small woman?&rdquo;

Still, Mayberry does accept a certain vulnerability in herself, something from which she derives great strength, a strength definitely felt on a track like &ldquo;Leave a Trace&rdquo; as well as 2013&rsquo;s &ldquo;Gun.&rdquo; It is a juxtaposition that helps drive her and something she admires in authors like Anne Carson and Angela Carter, as well as riot-grrrl pioneer Kathleen Hanna.

&ldquo;I read something [Hanna] said once where she was talking about the combination of vulnerability and strength,&rdquo; Mayberry said. &ldquo;Some days you feel like the weakest person in the world and some days you feel like you can absolutely conquer everything. &nbsp;I like the idea that even when you personally don&rsquo;t feel that strong you can write something that feels stronger, a &lsquo;learn to be it&rsquo; sort of thing. If you write what you feel, you&rsquo;re more in control even when you&rsquo;re falling apart.&rdquo;

Also on HuffPost:

]]>5 Lessons Music Festivals Everywhere Can Learn From Chicago's Pitchfork Festtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2015:/theblog//3.78443622015-07-22T09:12:37-04:002015-07-22T12:59:02-04:00Joseph Erbentrauthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-erbentraut/
Over the 10 years since music tastemakers Pitchfork first threw its annual music festival in the city's Union Park, there have of course been tweaks. Its Friday night lineup was previously dedicated solely to bands performing classic albums in their entirety, and in 2010 the festival tried a comedy stage. However, the core of the festival has remained constant year after year: An array of musical acts young and old booked to play on a festival ground that's neither too big nor too small for a crowd that's unusually open to new ideas and genres than one might expect of a Midwestern audience baking in a hot July sun.

The completely sold-out 2015 festival was no exception.

Despite the weather's best attempts to meddle -- Friday and especially Saturday were punishingly toasty, with a heat index over 100, and the Saturday storm turned much of the field into a muddy mess for the rest of the day -- the festival appeared to have gone off without any major hitches: From up-and-coming acts like Bully, Vic Mensa and Shamir to veterans like Sleater-Kinney, Kathleen Hanna and Freddie Gibbs, the vast majority of the lineup brought their A-game and gave the festivalgoers -- who paid a reasonable (compared to similar fests) $180 for a weekend pass or $65 for a day pass apiece -- a whole lotta bang for their buck.

With an ever-growing glut of music festivals entering the fray, these are five lessons from one of Chicago's finest annual music offerings I hope other fests will consider:

1. Safety comes first. Period.
As anti-rock n' roll as this sounds, when you're dealing with thousands of people confined in a space that's out in the open and a storm is coming through, difficult decisions must be made. Pitchfork organizers made one of those tough decisions by evacuating the festival grounds on Saturday afternoon for just over an hour. The grounds were certainly a mess when the park was reopened, but considerable improvements were undeniable on Sunday, allowing the festival to conclude on a high note. And zero injuries were reported on account of the storm.

2. Diversity (of race, sex, genre and sexuality) is a festival lineup's greatest asset.
Let's face it: Music festivals have a big problem when it comes to diversity but, at least when it comes to inclusion of female artists, Pitchfork has the edge on practically any other major music festival. Headliners Sleater-Kinney were an especially brilliant booking, playing one of the highest-energy, rocking-est headliner sets in recent Pitchfork memory and Scotland's synth-pop trio Chvrches really let it fly during their Friday set, particularly when playing their excellent, just-released single, "Leave A Trace." When it comes to genre, this year's Pitchfork festival had a little bit of everything from electronic to rap to punk to ambient music and, in a surprising twist, a whole lot of saxophone. (Or, the "sexy sax," as Tobias Jesso Jr. described it Friday.)

Run the Jewels' Killer Mike and El-P at Chicago's Pitchfork Music Festival.

And though certain stretches of the festival still felt dominated by white, straight men -- usually wearing all white (what was up with that?!) -- artists of color like Run the Jewels' inimitable Killer Mike and queer-identified artists like the unclassifiable Perfume Genius shone like diamonds in some of the festival's most coveted set times. (In one of the best lines of stage banter uttered all weekend, Perfume Genius' Mike Hadreas said, "On the walk over here, a man told me to take off my lipstick. I told him no. I could have said no forever.")

3. Don't get too big, too fast.
Despite the fact that Pitchfork is seemingly adding higher and higher-profile acts each year -- and also extending its festival footprint with the addition of an annual event in Paris beginning in 2013 -- the Chicago festival grounds have remained the same size year after year, allowing for attendees to have a festival experience that feels as peaceful and uncrowded as possible for an outdoor music event. The easy-to-follow, simple layout helps foster a low-key environment that almost always encourages kindness among festivalgoers -- and that's always a good thing.

4. Show love to your local artists.
This year's Pitchfork lineup may have been the most inclusive of local Chicago talent yet -- and it was to the weekend's benefit, as headliner Chance the Rapper spread his wings on Sunday, capping off the festival with the purest of joy and realest of passion. As Britt Julious pointed out in Vice's Noisey, it could not have been more "Chicago" and could not have come at a better time for Chicago. It was genuinely transcendent, especially the performance of "Sunday Candy." Other locals, like Mensa, Bitchin' Bajas and Jimmy Whispers also came alive in front of an audience filled with friends, family and peers. (Jimmy Whispers' "What a Wonderful World" outro might have been one of the more unusual things I've seen in eight years at this festival.)

On the flip side of that coin, some locals -- I'm looking at you, Wilco -- used the excuse of being in front of a hometown crowd to overindulge in brand-new music unfamiliar to most of the audience -- playing their entire day-old album to start their set -- so you can't win them all. Still, it's hard to imagine any other audience where Jeff Tweedy and co. could have gotten away with such a festival sin.

5. Take a chance on developing, up-and-coming acts.
Sure, everyone loves seeing the legends-in-the-making like Sleater-Kinney doing what they do best, but one of the best parts of any music festival experience is discovering new talents that excite you while those acts are discovering themselves in front of your very eyes.

For me, the two best examples of that this year were Bully and Shamir. Bully, a Nashville band flawlessly channelling mid-'90s grunge vibes, delivered a growling, thunderous set early Saturday afternoon, one that belied the fact that the band just released its debut album last month.

As for 20-year-old Shamir, indie disco-pop's new genderless empress doesn't have many live performances under their belt, but you wouldn't have known it from the exuberant set they treated Chicago to on Saturday afternoon. Though a mid-section of down-tempo songs broke the mood slightly from their set's thrilling opening and ending, it was still one of the weekend's finest musical moments.]]>20 Years Later, Considering The Legacy Of 'Jock Jams,' The 'Red Bull Of Music'55ae5a31e4b08f57d5d27c502015-07-21T10:41:53-04:002015-07-24T15:59:02-04:00Joseph Erbentrauthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-erbentraut/Get ready for this: "Jock Jams," that high-energy, testosterone-fueled, bro-friendly series of sports-themed music compilations, turns 20 on Saturday.&nbsp;

On July 25, 1995, the first "Jock Jams" album -- trumpeting a promise of &ldquo;the hottest crowd-pumping grooves of all time&rdquo; on its cheerleader-centric cover -- was released and was an almost immediate hit. The record, which combined R&amp;B and dance hits with arena-friendly anthems, went on to go platinum, an extraordinary feat for a music compilation even in the music industry&rsquo;s healthier days.

The songs on &ldquo;Jock Jams&rdquo; were popular in professional sports arenas with good reason. Anthems like the Village People&rsquo;s &ldquo;YMCA&rdquo; and Gary Glitter&rsquo;s &ldquo;Rock and Roll Part 2&rdquo; engaged with fans and pulled them out of their seats, making them feel intrinsically connected to their team&rsquo;s fate. These were the songs that soundtracked the communal joy that comes from being surrounded by your friends and fellow fans, cheering on your team as they (hopefully) kick ass on their way to a win.

But how the &ldquo;Jock Jams&rdquo; songs really embedded themselves into our collective brainwaves was the way in which they were used far away from the Michael Jordans and the Sammy Sosas of the time. For those who grew up in the &lsquo;90s, the compilations were the soundtrack to tense dodgeball showdowns during grade-school gym classes, or to that first middle-school dance, or to that first time being introduced as part of the starting lineup of their high school&rsquo;s basketball team. It&rsquo;s the same reason why newlyweds might select 2 Unlimited&rsquo;s &ldquo;Get Ready For This&rdquo; as the entrance song for their wedding reception or a club DJ today might throw a sample from Snap!&rsquo;s &ldquo;The Power&rdquo; in the middle of a killer set. The songs instantly transport listeners to simpler, jubilant times -- and who wouldn&rsquo;t want to go there?

With two decades now behind the birth of &ldquo;Jock Jams,&rdquo; it&rsquo;s time to take a trip back to our halcyon days and learn how those triumphant CDs came to be.

&nbsp;

The Origin Story: A 'Very Simple, Very Obvious' Idea

&nbsp;

The idea for "Jock Jams" -- and its older siblings, three volumes of "Jock Rock" -- initially came to Monica Lynch, then-president at Tommy Boy Records, a New York record label known for working with artists including De La Soul, Coolio, Afrika Bambaataa, Queen Latifah and RuPaul, when she was regularly taking in Knicks games at a mid-court box suite the label shared with an investment company at Madison Square Garden in the early 90s. It was an exciting time for the Knicks, with coach Pat Riley and center Patrick Ewing at the helm, and the team made it to the NBA Finals in 1994.

Lynch wondered if that excitement could translate to a compilation album in the vein of its successful "Party to Go" series with MTV.

&ldquo;To tell you the truth it was just like one of those very simple, very obvious ideas,&rdquo; Lynch told The Huffington Post. &ldquo;I would hear the same music being played at the games, all these classic rock and R&amp;B tracks with these organ bits in between, so I thought this stuff would probably be pretty easy to license."

Lynch, who is still working in music today, producing the soundtrack for HBO&rsquo;s &ldquo;Bessie&rdquo; and working on the staff of New York radio station WFMU, &nbsp;then approached Ray Castoldi, Madison Square Garden&rsquo;s resident music director since 1989, to ask if he&rsquo;d be interested in contributing classic organ bits to the CD. Castoldi immediately jumped onboard.

&ldquo;It&rsquo;s an idea that had been going around in my head,&rdquo; Castoldi told HuffPost. &ldquo;We have all these songs we play at the games from a wide variety of genres but they all seem to work together in the context of making people crazy at sporting events. Why don&rsquo;t we put them all in one place?&rdquo;

&nbsp;

But Was America Ready To Rumble?

&nbsp;

The key to the series&rsquo; success was Tommy Boy Records striking up a partnership with ESPN to help brand and promote the albums via television ads much like MTV had with the label&rsquo;s "Party to Go" series. This was new ground for both parties -- ESPN had not been in the music business before and the label had never specifically targeted sports fans -- but ESPN was also interested, if not 100 percent confident it&rsquo;d be a hit.

According to Sharyn Taymor, then-director of enterprises at ESPN, the cable channel was just beginning to branch out into new categories, considering a magazine, Internet presence, video games and radio, among other ideas. But all of those avenues felt more natural than a music compilation series.

&ldquo;It sounded like a cool idea but we were a little skeptical,&rdquo; Taymor said. Taymor wasn&rsquo;t the only one with doubts.

&ldquo;I thought it was the worst idea,&rdquo; Steve Knutson, then-director of sales at Tommy Boy, told HuffPost. &ldquo;I thought it was really stupid. Why would anyone do this, especially a hip-hop label?&rdquo;&nbsp;

But the team moved forward, releasing its first "Jock Rock" album in 1994, and selling 500,000 copies, followed by a sequel in 1995. Concurrently, the team was selecting and mixing tracks for the first volume of "Jock Jams" that ranged from stadium classics like &ldquo;Rock and Roll Part 2&rdquo; to newer songs that were hits by sound if not by name, like 2 Unlimited&rsquo;s &ldquo;Twilight Zone&rdquo; or Technotronic&rsquo;s &ldquo;Pump Up the Jam.&rdquo; Without Shazam, Spotify or YouTube around at the time, it was much harder to find such tracks.

&nbsp;

The Anatomy Of A 'Jock Jam'

&nbsp;

Many of the songs were already hits -- some more than others -- but shared some key qualities qualifying them as a &ldquo;jock jam." Castoldi helped the Tommy Boy team choose songs that audiences at the Garden for Knicks or Rangers NHL games were responding to.

&ldquo;It&rsquo;s got to have a really clear, engaging beat and a certain tempo range that will be a sweet spot -- not too fast, not too slow,&rdquo; Castoldi said. &ldquo;These songs are being played back in a big reverb chamber, a sports arena with crowd noise and sound echoing around, so the song can&rsquo;t be too busy or have too many components because it has to engage the fans. If the song has a part to chant along to or do certain dance moves to, it&rsquo;s going to have an extra edge.&rdquo;

Other contributors to the music that landed on "Jock Jams" were surprised to learn their work was being presented in that context.&nbsp;

&ldquo;I&rsquo;d never thought that those songs would be played in sporting events or things like that,&rdquo; Martha Wash, the Grammy-nominated vocalist of Weather Girls and Sylvester fame who sang on two tracks, Black Box&rsquo;s &ldquo;Strike It Up&rdquo; and C+C Music Factory&rsquo;s &ldquo;Gonna Make You Sweat," featured on volume one, told HuffPost. &ldquo;When I heard it the first time I said, &lsquo;What? Really? Wow, OK.&rsquo; That never, ever crossed my mind.&rdquo;

There was some pushback from ESPN over content that could be deemed as offensive to the network&rsquo;s audience, Taymor admitted. Today Taymor works as a consultant in cancer survivorship.

Some tracks Tommy Boy pushed for inclusion on "Jock Jams" albums didn&rsquo;t make the final cut and some songs required tweaks to get ESPN&rsquo;s approval.

&ldquo;I was pretty paranoid about it because ESPN was sort of a clean network and the music business wasn&rsquo;t always like that,&rdquo; Taymor said. &ldquo;We had to do a little bit of editing and would always be looking over what they were doing, making sure the final edits were exactly what we agreed upon. But at the end of the day, we&rsquo;d figure it out and compromise.&rdquo;

&nbsp;

Let's Talk About Those Covers

&nbsp;

When it came to packaging the CD, close attention was paid to a cover design that would be eye-catching, but still family-friendly. They landed on a logo using a font recalling the chenille lettering of a varsity jacket and a bright color palate that was heavy on orange and red.

Their inspiration for the cheerleading squads featured prominently on both the CD jacket and television spot came from a somewhat unusual place: Both Lynch and Knutson of Tommy Boy were big fans of Roxy Music, a British glam rock band known for provocative album covers that typically featured scantily-clad women.

&ldquo;I always kind of look at us as the TV version of the Roxy Music girls covers, for middle America,&rdquo; Knutson, who went on to found Audika Records, the Portland, Oregon-based label that&rsquo;s home to the estate of the late composer and musician Arthur Russell, said. &ldquo;I think we were not far from that idea.&rdquo;

&nbsp;

How Successful Were Those CDs Anyway? It's Unbelievable

&nbsp;

According to Tom Silverman, founder and CEO of Tommy Boy, the "Jock Jams" albums were -- at their peak -- providing about 30 percent of the label&rsquo;s income. Since compilations avoid many of the costs of signing, developing, recording and launching a new artist&rsquo;s release, a larger chunk of that income was profits.

&ldquo;It was great, we were selling records to jocks, sports enthusiasts who no one had really targeted before,&rdquo; Silverman told The Huffington Post. &ldquo;Kids would buy these things and play them before their own games as psych-up records. It was a different way to use music and people hadn&rsquo;t thought about music like that. The concept was that this would get you going. It was the Red Bull of music.&rdquo;

Lynch of Tommy Boy said, they were picking up sales not just from traditional &ldquo;jocks,&rdquo; though. The CDs appealed to women who wanted something to listen to on a Discman while working out and provided a tailormade soundtrack for an exercise class.

Once the first volume of "Jock Jams" had sold 100,000 copies, work on the second volume, released in 1996, began. That CD went on to be an even bigger success than the debut, cracking the top 10 of the Billboard chart for the series&rsquo; first and only time, thanks in no small part of the inclusion of the year&rsquo;s best-selling single, &ldquo;Macarena."

The second volume introduced cheerleader chants between the songs -- like &ldquo;action, boys, action!&rdquo; -- and matched the design of the inaugural edition, creating a visual consistency that was carried through all the volumes, reinforcing the brand.

The next volumes that followed between the years 1997 and 1999 did not match the second volume&rsquo;s numbers, but were still deemed a success by the label. A "Jock Jams" "megamix" mashing up some of the series&rsquo; most recognizable hits also climbed the charts. All told, the series sold more than 4 million copies.

&nbsp;

So, What Happened?

&nbsp;

But by the time an &ldquo;all-star&rdquo; "Jock Jams" was released in 2001, the industry was in tumult. Napster had arrived, popularizing file-sharing in a way that allowed music fans to easily create their own mix CDs &mdash; for free. In addition, according to Silverman, who remains at Tommy Boy and also founded the annual New Music Seminar&nbsp;in New York, said the major labels associated with the "Now That&rsquo;s What I Call Music!" franchise agreed to only license their music to "Now" compilations, which made the licensing for new "Jock Jams" albums next to impossible.&nbsp;

&ldquo;It really pissed me off,&rdquo; Silverman told HuffPost. &ldquo;To me, it felt like an anti-trust thing. How can four labels make a decision to do that?&rdquo;&nbsp;

The canon of sports anthems was slow to adopt new entries, which also made it more challenging to fill the later "Jock Jams" albums with recognizable songs, Silverman added.

Still, many of the songs from the compilations are nearly as popular today as they were 20 years ago, being played not only at sports events, but also turning up at wedding receptions, bar mitzvahs and school dances.

&nbsp;

Hip Hop Hooray: The Legacy Lives On

&nbsp;

Castoldi points to recent chart-toppers from the likes of Fall Out Boy, LMFAO and Avicii today as borrowing heavily from the potent micro-genre he helped define.

That the series is still have an influence today is a testament, Castoldi believes, to the songs capturing the spirit of a unique time in music, sports and entertainment history. Castoldi continues to serve as Madison Square Garden&rsquo;s music director today, and has also directed music for Winter Olympic hockey games and a number of Pro Bowls and NHL All-Star Games.

&ldquo;It felt like we were doing a New York thing at the beginning. Things were really exciting right here, so let&rsquo;s document the musical choices we were making,&rdquo; Castoldi said. &ldquo;Then to find out that it was a hit all across the country, it was a very special time.&rdquo;

Silverman agreed. &ldquo;'Jock Jams' was more than a compilation," Silverman said. "It was trying to capture a state of mind and it did that successfully. The essence of the spirit of baseball that happens between the home runs and strikeouts. It&rsquo;s a very powerful thing when used the right way.&rdquo;&nbsp;

Still, we had to wonder, with all things &lsquo;90s becoming new again, could a "Jock Jams" reboot be in the works? It&rsquo;s doubtful.

&ldquo;'Jock Jams' occupied a certain magical moment in music history and I wouldn&rsquo;t want to besmirch its golden, or platinum, reputation by trying to reboot it,&rdquo; Lynch said. &ldquo;We had a really good run. So there&rsquo;s no anger for me. It&rsquo;s just not a Jock Jams emotion to have.&rdquo;

We asked the people behind "Jock Jams" to name their favorite tracks on the compilations, these were many of their picks:

A partnership between advocates for the homeless, city outreach workers and a health center is helping mentally ill people living on the streets of Miami access the medication they need for a better future.

The bring-the-clinic-to-them approach, which began last year, has been dubbed the Lazarus Project and combines the efforts of city homeless-outreach workers, advocates from&nbsp;the Miami Coalition for the Homeless&nbsp;and medical practitioners from the Camillus House, a health and social services agency. On a daily basis, teams tour downtown Miami in a van, seeking out some of the city&rsquo;s most vulnerable homeless individuals.

The project started by identifying nine chronically homeless people living in Miami and spent a month getting to know them and explaining the program, which entails the team diagnosing participants, keeping a close eye on them and supplying them with and ensuring they take their medication, according to the Associated Press. The eventual goal is to get them&nbsp;off the streets.

Seven people from that initial group of would-be clients signed up and more have followed over the past year.

And though the project&rsquo;s clients often had long histories of arrests and hospitalizations, only a few participants in the program have returned to either a jail or hospital.

Most of the participants, instead, are receiving the mental health treatment they need and are either awaiting benefits or a placement, or have already moved off the streets and into a shelter, the AP reports. One of the project&rsquo;s first clients went from living under the Flagler Street bridge to working a construction job and living in a Camillus-subsidized apartment.

Mental illness is an all-too-common struggle among America&rsquo;s homeless. According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, about 30 percent of chronically homeless people&nbsp;currently have a mental health condition and over 60 percent have experienced mental health problems at some point in their lifetime.

As noted by the National Coalition for the Homeless, mental illness has been cited as the third most common cause&nbsp;of homelessness as severe mental health issues impact a person&rsquo;s ability to take care of essential aspects of their day-to-day life and can be linked with difficulty maintaining relationships with family, friends and caregivers who might otherwise prevent an individual from becoming homeless.

The Miami project is just one example of a strategy to get America&rsquo;s mentally ill homeless population connected with treatment and into stable housing. Another, the &ldquo;housing first&rdquo; approach, puts homeless individuals into housing before treating medical or mental health issues they are dealing with.

At the local level, Houston has seen a 45 percent drop in its homeless population&nbsp;in just four years thanks in part to the Way Home, a housing first action plan that prioritized the creation of permanent housing units for the city&rsquo;s homeless.

Though such programs are saving the federal government millions of dollars annually -- multiple&nbsp;analyses have shown that housing the homeless is dramatically cheaper than letting them remain homeless -- housing first initiatives have struggled to attain the level of political and financial support needed to keep up with the level of need, according to a 2014 story in USA Today.

For many women in poor, rural parts of the world, a lack of access to a private toilet is not just a matter of inconvenience, it also puts her at risk of diseases,&nbsp;sexual assault&nbsp;and ridicule.

But in the poverty-stricken&nbsp;Bihar region of India, a unique partnership between non-governmental organizations and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has resulted in the construction of 10,000 new toilets allowing women to relieve themselves in a more secure and healthy way.

To kick off the project, Population Services International, a global network of locally-based groups, worked with partners including PATH, a global health organization, and Water for People, a water access group, in order to design a toilet that low-income people in the area would be able to buy and install in their homes.

Their market-based approach engages with local entrepreneurs who take part in the construction of the toilets and, three years since its launch, is already impacting the lives of some of the region&rsquo;s poorest families. According to the organization, 681 of the households who have purchased the toilets did so through a sanitation loan PSI helped facilitate and 36 percent of the toilets sold have gone to individuals living below the poverty line.

The project isn&rsquo;t just stopping at 10,000 toilets. According to a blog post written by Dr. Desmond Chavasse, PSI&rsquo;s senior vice president of malaria and child survival, the goal of the project is to deliver over 150,000 toilets&nbsp;to the region.

According to a 2013 BBC story, police and social activists alike believe that the majority of rape cases in the Bihar region are committed when women defecate in the open&nbsp;because they lack access to a private toilet.

Though much progress on the issue has been made in many countries where the practice was previously common, such as Vietnam and Bangladesh, more work remains to be done in order to improve access and change attitudes on the matter, the U.N. says.

When it comes to food, the world has two major, conflicting problems: Hunger&nbsp;and waste. But a&nbsp;new powder could help address both of those issues, simultaneously.

Earlier this month, a group of students at Lund University in Sweden completed a successful, 219,786 Swedish krona (about $25,700) Kickstarter campaign&nbsp;to support the scaling up of their business model, which consists of receiving cheap, nearly expired fruits and vegetables from grocery stores, processing them into a food powder, called FoPo, and selling that powder back to the markets.

The powder is innovative in that it extends the shelf life of garbage-bound produce from two weeks to two years while still maintaining much of its taste and nutritional quality. As Mashable notes, the powder is currently available in three flavors&nbsp;-- banana, raspberry and mango -- with a fourth, pineapple, coming soon. As noted by Springwise, FoPo would be the first freeze-dried fruit product&nbsp;to be sourced entirely by produce that would otherwise be discarded.

"[We are] not into using a new product or new technology, [but] creating value out of the inefficiency of the food system," Gerald Marin, one of the students behind the product, told Mashable. "The innovation of our business is that we are getting the expired fruits and vegetables."

The students are confident they are onto something good. In the months ahead, they plan to sell the powder directly to food manufacturers and restaurants as well as online, after they conduct further testing and choose a manufacturer. They also plan to explore possible partnerships with non-governmental organizations that conduct humanitarian aid missions.

&ldquo;It becomes an ideal product for humanitarian aid purposes since it can be produced for a lower price while preserving the nutritional contents,&rdquo; Marin told Rappler, a Philippine news website, earlier this year.

They&rsquo;ve already seen considerable interest in the powder, too. Thanks in part to a partnership with the Philippine government, which saw the powder as a promising way to feed people in the event of a disaster like Typhoon Haiyan in 2013, 26 Philippine grocery stores have signed letters of intent that they plan to work with the company.

In addition, 10 grocery stores and two farms in Poland are also interested, according to the company&rsquo;s Kickstarter campaign.

In a report released earlier this year, the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate reported that one third of all food produced worldwide ends up being discarded, rather than eaten. That food is reportedly worth $400 billion annually and food waste levels are anticipated to grow to $600 billion in the next decade.

]]>Here's The Actual Impact All Those Buckets Of Ice Had On ALS Research55a699a7e4b0c5f0322c0ae52015-07-15T13:34:31-04:002015-07-16T15:59:01-04:00Joseph Erbentrauthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-erbentraut/

Remember this time last year when everyone&rsquo;s congresswoman, favorite singer&nbsp;and probably a distant cousin or 10 was dumping ice water on their heads in the name of ALS research and awareness? The global #IceBucketChallenge raised an estimated $220 million in donations&nbsp;and, a year after it began, we&rsquo;re learning more about the effect all that money has had.

The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based ALS Therapy Development Institute, a nonprofit biotech focused entirely on ALS, is one group that received a sizable chunk of those funds. According to the institute, the $4 million it received from the campaign went directly toward research programs &ldquo;with the best opportunities to make an impact to end ALS.&rdquo;

A quarter of the funds received from the challenge went directly to fund the first precision medicine program for ALS, a program aimed at identifying subtypes of the disease and determining the most effective specific therapies to treat each type in order to advance them into a clinical trial, according to the institute. And the rest funded the development of two clinical trial programs.

Other groups working to address ALS, which is also referred to as Lou Gehrig&rsquo;s disease, have also spoken to the impact #IceBucketChallenge funds have had on their efforts. In San Francisco, biotech company Cytokinetics&nbsp;received $1.5 million to fund the late-stage testing of an experimental drug, called tirasemtiv, that could improve lung function for ALS patients. This marks the first time such a drug has reached late-stage trials, according to a Bloomberg report.

As for the rest, the ALS Association&nbsp;has outlined how the millions of dollars in donations were doled out to other research programs, educational initiatives and patient and community services on its website. Among the other recipients of funds are the Neuro Collaborative, a partnership between three California laboratories working on developing new therapies for the disease.

CNN reports the partnership, which received $5 million from the challenge, is working to create stem cell lines&nbsp;that will mimic ALS patients&rsquo; existing nerve cells.&nbsp;

"It's a bit like having an avatar of yourself in the petri dish,&rdquo; Clive Svendsen of the Neuro Collaborative told CNN.

There is currently no cure or known cause for ALS and only one drug approved by the FDA that has been shown to prolong ALS patients' lives by at least a few months, according to the ALS Association.

The ALS Association plans to bring the challenge back next month -- and &ldquo;every August until a cure,&rdquo; Julie Frates, the wife of challenge co-founder Pete Frates, told CBS Boston affiliate WBZ last week.

It will be difficult for the challenge to duplicate the success of its award-winning&nbsp;inaugural run, which marked&nbsp;a 1,000-percent spike&nbsp;in donations to the ALS Association.

According to new research released Wednesday by Treato, an Israeli startup that tracks patients&rsquo; online discussions on health issues, only 14 percent of survey participants who donated as part of the challenge last year plan to donate again this year.&nbsp;

Still, the challenge appears to have had a larger effect that perhaps goes beyond the fundraising.

According to the Treato data analysis, online conversations about ALS grew almost six times compared to the same time the previous year, and 29 percent of survey participants who took part in the challenge said they had little to no knowledge of ALS prior to the campaign.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story incorrectly described&nbsp;Riluzole, the FDA-approved ALS treatment, as reducing symptoms of the disease. The drug, instead, has been shown to prolong the life of ALS patients by at least a few months.